


Rag and Bone Man

by kitundercover



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst?, Backstory, Fluff, M/M, Pairing but not really, Pining, Sweet, but not really, it's all about the jackets, jackets, just a little, sort of pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 08:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9811823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitundercover/pseuds/kitundercover
Summary: “The right jacket is like a uniform. Get that right and you’ll get where you’re supposed to go.”Everyone needs somewhere to belong. It takes thirty-two years for Dirk to find his.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the WIP I was supposed to be working on, but it's the bunny that laid waste to my brain, so here we go!
> 
> Thanks to Ammy and [Asj](https://pumpkino.tumblr.com/) for looking over it for me! xxx

When Svlad is nine he solves his first case. 

Well, _solve_ is perhaps too strong a word, but he climbs a fence and finds a cat that he just _knows_ belongs to Mrs. Bucur down the road, and when she claims to have no knowledge of the feline he just hangs onto it, waiting.

Which turns out to be the right approach, because Mrs. Bucur eventually comes back dragging her distraught new lodger who, as it turned out, had moved in just that morning and had somehow lost track of his new tabby that _must be so terribly cold and frightened out in a new neighborhood, and the cat wasn’t even Romanian and almost certainly didn’t speak the language…_

The case isn’t without its sacrifices of course, and what type of crime-fighter would he be if it were? He rips his shirt climbing the fence – well, it’s more the _dismount_ than the climb but that’s not important, and he loses a shoe somehow on the way back, which upsets him more than his father says it should.

But it’s worth it, when the next day The Lodger comes back and hands him what becomes his most prized possession.

“A detective mustn’t look like a detective.” The Lodger says, as he hands over the roughest looking denim jacket that Svlad’s nine-year-old eyes have ever seen. “The right jacket is like a uniform. Get that right and you’ll get where you’re supposed to go.”

Svlad doesn’t really understand the words, but he remembers them.

\--

The CIA won’t let Svald keep his jacket. In fact, when his parents hand him over, they do it without anything but the clothes on his back, and he’ll never forgive himself for not wearing it that morning.

He’s twelve now, and his parents have sent him away and a man with a moustache has locked him in a bedroom that’s too small with a bed that’s too soft and a light that’s too bright.

They dress him in baggy trousers and hooded tops, all dark, all cozy. It’s as if they’d researched ‘how to dress a soon-to-be-teenager, and gone shopping accordingly.

He’s special, they tell him, and they force him to guess cards over and over and shout at him when he gets it wrong. They tell him he’s psychic. He tells them he isn’t.

There are other kids at the compound, and Svlad wonders if they’re supposed to be psychic too. He sees them sometimes. Some of them are allowed to socialize. Some of them aren’t. There’s a girl that’s constantly escorted around with a blindfold over her eyes and another who’s mouth is always covered.

They’re all wearing the same, and it’s just like The Lodger had said – it’s a uniform, only it’s a uniform to a club that Svlad doesn’t want to be a part of. He talks to the others sometimes, but the man is always nearby and the conversations are awkward. They don’t seem to understand him – each of them too wrapped up in their own issues.

When the girl with the blindfold trips up a guard and dashes his head open on the corner of the table, Svlad doesn’t hesitate. He follows the group of four boys who rush at the doors. They’re different, these four. They’ve torn at their jumpers and tied strips of fabric around their heads. They look rough. Rough like his old jacket. When they reach a new guard they lean over him and suck out a blue mist that the blonde one claims is fear and Svlad suspects is some kind of psychic energy. _They’re_ psychic then, even if he isn’t.

He leaves the hoodie on the floor as he escapes – he’ll find a new uniform.

\--

When Svlad’s twenty, he’s not Svlad anymore.

The name had been something from his parents. Something that wasn’t his. He’d gone back to find them after the dust from the escape had settled, of course, but they hadn’t been there, and when he’d finally tracked them down it turned out that they hadn’t been his parents anymore. Just people.

They hadn’t kept his things either.

After that he’d travelled. He’d gone to England for a while, to Cambridge, but he had an unfortunate knack of guessing things he shouldn’t know; exam papers, for example, and he’d had to leave in a hurry. He’d learned things there though. He’d learned he liked knowledge more than learning, boys more than girls, that cap and gowns weren’t the right uniform either.

He’d also learned to speak in an accent that helped him blend in, and, after some deliberation and careful reading, he’d found something else; something that _did_ belong to him – a name. _Dirk Gently._

\--

Dirk had always known when he was doing something right or something wrong. Not in a moral sense _per se_ , because morality was tricky and changed wherever you went. But something about the world told him when he was doing the right thing. Or the wrong one. The CIA had called it psychic. Dirk called it unfortunate. Still, at twenty-seven, Dirk thinks he’s starting to get the hang of things. He wears smart shirts and tailored trousers and the roughest denim jackets he can find.

He thinks that maybe that summer when he was nine was the happiest he’d ever been, and he still remembers The Lodger’s words - _The right jacket is like a uniform. Get that right and you’ll get where you’re supposed to go_.

Well where Dirk wants to be is back in his old neighborhood on the case of missing cats in his favorite jacket, so he does his best.

He’s got a detective agency in London, and it isn’t much, but somehow he feels like he might finally be heading in the right direction. The universe lets him settle, for a time, and he gets to use his _knack_ for things that are even helpful sometimes. He actually starts to get a reputation for saving cats, and oddly enough, messy divorces before the universe changes its mind.

He’s dragged halfway across the world to America of all places, and there’s a scuffle along the way that involves an armadillo and far too much cinnamon for his liking. And just like that the jackets are gone.

He solves the case – it seemed that the exotic animal dealer had been using his contacts in a private physics lab to build a quantum unicorn out of sugar and spice and plutonium. And an armadillo. 

He solves the case, but it isn’t enough. The jackets are lost, and he’s got no money. He’s all alone in the world, and somehow he finds himself being passed from Marriot hotel to Marriot hotel in a blur of steadily increasing insanity.

He solves cases, and it doesn’t help. He starts again, over and over. He looks in shop windows along the way; when he’s met someone who can handle his presence for more than an hour without running away, when he’s solved a case, when the universe has seen fit to remunerate him with enough capital to consider it.

He leaves the jackets in the windows.

The people go. The cases end. The money runs out.

\--

The hoarfrost has turned the ground into a glittering mass when Dirk considers getting a jacket again. It’s cold, and he definitely needs one.

He travels south instead.

\--

He wears zip-up hoodies after that, and he drifts. He’s thirty now, he’s thirty-one, he’s thirty-two and still he’s wearing jumpers and vests.

Cases come and go, and people come and go, and money comes and goes, and Dirk thinks that maybe he’s wearing a Drifting Uniform because that’s all it seems he can do these days.

He stops looking in windows.

He stops thinking about jackets.

\--

He’s still thirty-two when a man called Patrick Spring calls him about a case, and something in the wind changes: it’s less than a feeling, but more than a hunch. Something it seems, has finally thawed, and it’s like the universe it telling him that _it’s almost time. We had to wait, but it’s almost time._  

He takes the case. He takes the money.

He turns a corner when a bright splash of color catches his eye, and there they are.

Jackets. Leather. He’s got money in his hand and a case to solve and suddenly Dirk doesn’t want to just _drift_ anymore.

He buys a green one, and a blue one, and a yellow one.

Then he puts them carefully away in his hotel room and waits, because somehow he knows that he still has to drift a little longer.

 _It’s almost time._ The universe whispers.

\--

He’s walking through a hotel corridor when he runs into _himself_ of all people. And this him is bright and excited. This him has light in his eyes that he’s never seen before and energy that reminds him of when he was nine, and he’s bouncing as he says the word _friend. Best friend._

He gets home with a kitten in his hand and a new feeling creeping through his chest. It’s a little like hope, and a lot like heartburn. He throws away his old clothes and buys shirts and ties, because it’s _time._ He knows it.

He rents a car, bright and colorful, and he wears his jacket to match it. He’s quite attached to the blue one, and he wears it over and over.

The yellow jacket though, the yellow jacket is the _best._ Because the yellow jacket is when he meets Todd.

Well no, technically the actual first time when he meets Todd he’s pre-jacket and still drifting, but that’s not an official meeting and so doesn’t officially count.

\--

Todd is complications and lies and resistance, and Dirk doesn’t know if the Dirk he saw in the hotel corridor was really _him_ or even a him that he can trust, but Todd’s got eyes the color of Dirk’s car, so Dirk leaves his caution behind.

And he was right to, it turns out, because Todd matches him blow for blow, albeit reluctantly at first, and angrily at the end. Todd brings him back when he’s gone too far and pushes him forwards when he’s stopped too soon.

They meet a girl called Farah and they save a girl called Lydia and Todd has a sister called Amanda and suddenly Dirk has friends plural and he doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

And Todd even has a jacket. It’s denim and it makes Dirk’s heart clench even more than those unnecessarily blue eyes. Even Farah has a jacket, and the four boys from the compound have shown up again and _they_ have jackets, and then Amanda gets a jacket.

They have a uniform. They’re a unit. A team.

\--

It’s his thirty-third birthday when he ends up back with the CIA, and he’s never had reason to celebrate before now, but something in him cracks with a terrible mixture of grief and elation when he realizes that he won’t spend this one with his friends, but he _could_ have, if only he still had his jacket.

He’s not in a hoodie these days, but they’ve given him a soft zip-up jumper that they called a sweater and they took his yellow jacket and they burned it. In front of him. He’s not there by choice of course, but that isn’t new, and it seems that they’ve been watching him since he left, which Dirk had maybe even known, deep down.

The cards this time are less pleasant. He gets them wrong on purpose for a while and they get angry. The shouting unsettles him and he gets a few right, and that, it seems, is the biggest mistake he could have made.

Stress makes him psychic, they tell him. He tells them it doesn’t.

They make him good and stressed after that, and sometimes it’s threats, and sometimes it’s shouting. It stops working after a while, as all threats do if not carried out.

After that, it’s electricity.

They tell him it’s working. He says nothing.

His friends will come; he thinks for a while. Because they care about him, they _said_ they did, and no one’s ever cared enough about Dirk to lie about these sorts of things, so why would they start now?

 _Todd’s a liar._ His brain tries to convince him, but Dirk knows better; Todd’s _reformed._

After a week the doubts are getting louder, but he thinks about Todd’s blue eyes matching his car, about his part in the case, about his bright smile and those fond looks that Dirk had started to see directed at himself. Of course, that’s the day when the electricity treatment starts, and for a while Dirk has no friends, and no one cares about him, and Dirk drifts.

\--

It’s two weeks, two days and two hours when they finally break him out. Of course, Dirk doesn’t know this, because Dirk’s stress-related testing has been escalating and he hasn’t been able to count the days in a while.

“You came.” He says to Todd when the mist finally clears from his head.

“We’re a team.” Todd replies.

“They took my jacket.” Dirk says.

“We’ll get you another one.”

\--

Todd does get him another one.

It’s orange, and soft leather, and Dirk’s only been back a day before he’s presented with it. He’s wearing it even before his legs will support him long enough to leave the house. _Todd’s house_ , Dirk thinks with a warm, tingling sensation, because Dirk has friends now and his friends look after him.

Todd hasn’t been wearing his jacket – well, he’s been wearing _a_ jacket; it’s black and Dirk wonders if Todd’s trying to look tough in it. If maybe he’s trying to impress someone— he stops the thoughts before they get too dangerous.

Todd’s new jacket lasts a full week after Dirk’s back in action. This time there’s a cow and a powder that eats through rubber and nothing else. Dirk thinks it’s rather pitiful as far as weapons go before he sees it eat through his beautiful car. Turns out lots of small fiddly bits are made out of rubber. Turns out that cars don’t go well without them.

The cow ends up at a nearby farm, and the next day they’re introduced to a powder that eats through leather instead and there goes Todd’s new jacket. Dirk performs a complicated sort of Chasse to avoid the stuff and somehow manages to get away with his uniform intact.

Well he thinks he has.

He’s not paying as much attention as he might though, because Todd, unsure of what materials the powder would go through, and quite rightly terrified for his skin, has removed his shirt as well.

Dirk can feel his cheeks heating up and he just knows that when he opens his mouth, whatever comes out won’t be something he can take back. Fortunately, the criminals take that moment to run for it, and Dirk only has to suffer through a few brief seconds of Todd’s raised eyebrow.

Predictably, they lose the criminals and end up back at Todd’s again, at which point the old denim jacket comes out of hiding and Dirk has to fight with everything he has not to stare at it. Of course, the bad guys seem to have followed them this time, so the chase is back on.

\--

The criminals chase them into a lake.

Opportunely, the police are standing on the bank when the criminals finally get tired and climb out again.

\--

Dirk’s perched atop a fruit vending machine at a nearby zoo – and he isn’t even sure _himself_ why or how that happened – when he realizes that he’d crawled out of the lake _sans_ jacket.

The terror is immediate. “Todd!” And the panic in his voice is palpable. “My jacket!”

It’s not a surprise that Todd doesn’t exactly get it, but he’s a good Assistant and an even better friend and it must be clear that it’s important.

They rush back to the lake and it isn’t there, and Todd suggests that Dirk buys a hoodie from the zoo gift shop and Dirk sees red. His hands reach out of their own accord and he’s got Todd by the scruff and he’s really much too close, but Todd doesn’t seem to be pulling back like he should. “I need a jacket!” Dirk shrieks madly. “A jacket!”

Todd is distressingly un-phased by his sudden lack of sensibility, and a more stable Dirk might be a little embarrassed at that, but right now Dirk has lost his jacket and his identity has gone with it.

He’d built his sanity back up layer by painful layer after numerous stays in terrible places and he’d finally found a uniform that fitted!

“Dirk it’s ok.” Todd whispers, and Dirk can feel a trembling through his hands that he knows Todd must feel.

“It’s not ok. I need a jacket.” Dirk whispers back.

And then Todd is stepping back and there’s a moment of quiet tinged with wet denim and then there’s a jacket around Dirk’s shoulders.

\--

The new jacket isn’t like the old one. It’s not leather for a start, and it’s not brightly colored, and it’s not smart.

It’s blue, and it’s covered in patches, it’s old, it’s used, it’s rough. But something about it feels right. Feels familiar. It feels—

“Todd?” Dirk looks down at the jacket. The jacket looks back. “Todd, where did you get this?”

“An old garage sale.” Todd replies.

“Near here?” Dirk whispers. Feeling the rip at the elbow, the patch at the hem.

“No, actually.” Todd smiles at him a soft smile. “I went to Romania once, it was years and years ago – Transylvania, we thought it would be cool. Some guy gave it to me. He said jackets were important.”

Dirk looks down at _his_ jacket. The jacket looks back.

\--

It clicks after that.

Well not everything. Not straight away. But the jacket is back. It’s Dirk’s jacket, it really is, and Todd is willing to let him keep it for now.

They solve cases, him and Todd, and Amanda and Farah. Sometimes the Rowdy three help and Dirk lets them because somehow Todd has acquired pararibulitis and Dirk is willing to go through just about anything to make sure he suffers as little as possible. So Todd has painful, seemingly psychic hallucinations and the Rowdy three suck the energy out of him, and if they occasionally stop to sample Dirk’s terror – well, it’s a cheap exchange. 

And sometimes Dirk looks at himself, looks at the jacket, and he hears the words that came with it: _The right jacket is like a uniform. Get that right and you’ll get where you’re supposed to go…_ Well now Dirk has the right jacket. He finally has the right uniform and he’s finally where he’s supposed to go and the universe has finally stopped pushing him around like a defective chess piece.

Dirk’s thirty-three on a quiet Sunday afternoon when the universe decides to make its final move: Dirk’s just thinking about having another go at cooking, and he’s round at Todd’s place for no other reason than he _wants_ to be, and for some miraculous reason Todd seems to want that too, and it’s just the two of them as Todd approaches.

There’s something different though, this time. Something predatory in the way he moves, and there’s a new feel to the universe – sort of charged – like and electric rhino waiting just behind the door.

“I think,” Todd says with a glint in his eyes, “that it’s time we got you out of that jacket.”

Something in Dirk’s chest _cracks._ “You want it back.” He says with quiet resignation, because it was bound to happen sometime, and Dirk is willing to admit that he’s not so good with these inter-personal-person-on-person types of things, and there were probably looks that he’s been misinterpreting and words that he’s heard wrong. He’s had hope though.

“No.” The glint sharpens. “I just want you out of it right now.”

“Oh?” Dirk says, and then, “ _Oh. Oh!_ ”

And then everything clicks.

\--

“I guess that’s yours now.” Todd says with a fond smile on a Monday morning, because Dirk’s thirty-four and fond smiles are his every day now.

He feels spoiled almost, secure as he drinks them in, always desperate for more no matter how much affection he’s shown, and Todd isn’t shy with his affection.

“I’ll give it back one day.” Dirk shrugs.

“You’re going to leave me.” Todd says it with a smile, because he doesn’t believe it, and maybe they’re both secure these days. Todd buys Dirk new jackets sometimes, and Dirk loves every single one.

“I won’t need it anymore.” Dirk says with a small smile.

“It’s like a comfort blanket?” Todd asks.

“A uniform.”

“You already belong here Dirk.” Todd says softly, because somehow he understands the point, even if Dirk can’t say it. And maybe that’s why they work, because Dirk understands Todd too, and really, all either of them ever wanted was to feel like they belonged somewhere.

Dirk smiles.

\--

It’s years later when Dirk finally gives back the jacket. But by then their clothes are a jumble of light and dark in a drawer and the only real uniform Dirk finds he needs is the plain silver band on his left hand. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found skulking on tumblr here: [gentlyundercover](https://gentlyundercover.tumblr.com/) or here: [kitundercover](https://kitundercover.tumblr.com/)


End file.
